First Look - July 2017

Facility Management Tech Can Make Recordkeeping More Efficient

One thing all attraction facilities have in common—no matter the size and scope—is management’s need to know the location, status, and activity of every employee and physical asset on site.

Lightship Works in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, has developed an application that provides management teams with an integrated, real-time, bird’s-eye view of an entire facility. Lightship connects mobile devices and location sensors to track and communicate with employees, display the status of equipment, and document all facility events. Its data integration platform has scalable storage, and archives all the data it captures.

“Lightship’s key benefit to managers on a day-to-day basis is the platform’s ability to give them situational awareness spanning across the entire park in real time,” says Kevin O’Brien, Lightship’s vice president of sales and alliances. “Each group manager now knows, in one shared map-based view, the location, condition, and status of each person, asset, and area under his or her purview. The instantaneous communication capability of the platform allows immediate, intelligent communication to the appropriate resources.”

O’Brien notes the system doesn’t benefit just managers, but other team members, as well. It gives them immediate access, via smartphone, to critical data such as location of co-workers or assets, equipment maintenance records, and animal keeper report histories. The information can update with new data to reflect current conditions. He explains how Lightship can be crucial in emergencies:

“In a crisis, the first thing that breaks is often the communications path. So where, exactly, is your crisis response team at that very moment? You’ll know. For rides: why is one down, say, 7 percent of the time? Is it when the humidity reaches a certain point? You’ll know that, as well. Big systems don’t fail because of big mistakes. Big systems fail because of little mistakes, and many systems just monitor for problems, but don’t address them when they occur.”

O’Brien says at many facilities, data gathering is done by supervisors walking around with clipboards. This crucial action can be disrupted when guests pour through the turnstiles. However, Lightship’s mobile devices and sensors are completely unaffected and keep reporting and recording information. Cloud-based, it is infinitely scalable, suitable for attractions of many sizes.

Lightship handles the technical side of implementation after staging meetings with the attraction. O’Brien says a recent commercial-level pilot for a large theme park was operational within 30 days of contract approval.